With Yemen on the verge of famine, and civilians paying a
devastating toll in the relentless Saudi-led bombing campaign, one key question
emerges: Will the U.S. government ever be held to account for its role in the
crisis?

The United Nations warned
Wednesday that the country of 26 million faces the highest-level humanitarian
emergency—on par with Iraq, Syria, and South Sudan.

The grim assessment adds to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's call
on Wednesday for an immediate halt to the fighting, or at the very least, a
"pause in hostilities until the end of the holy month of Ramadan so that
humanitarian aid can be delivered into and across Yemen and reach people cut
off from vital supplies for months."

As of now, nearly 13 million people are "not able to meet
their food needs," and 15 million "have no healthcare and outbreaks
of dengue and malaria are raging unchecked," said
the UN in another statement this week.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, UN envoy for Yemen, warned
last week that the country is "one step" from famine.

"Children are not being vaccinated—either because health
centres do not have electricity or the fuel they need to keep vaccines cold and
distribute them, or because parents are too frightened by the fighting to take
their children to receive vaccinations," said Dr. Peter Salama, UNICEF
regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, earlier this week.
"The tragic result is that children are going to die of diseases like
measles and pneumonia that would normally be preventable."

Journalist Chris Toensing wrote that
the United States is "partly to blame" for Yemen's starvation and
crisis, pointing out that "the United States has even announced a full
suspension of aid to Yemen for a year, undercutting its occasional murmurs of
humanitarian concern."

"The Obama administration should withdraw its support for
the bombing, lift the blockade, and broker a power-sharing agreement between
Yemen’s competing factions," Toensing urged. "For the people of
Yemen, it’s beyond urgent."

In the more than three months since the Saudi coalition bombings
began, roughly 3,000 people have been killed, half of them civilians, according to
the statistics released Thursday by the United Nations. In addition, 14,000
have been wounded and more than a million forcibly displaced from their homes.

Strikes have hit schools, refugee camps, power plants, and
warehouses storing humanitarian aid, and Amnesty International declared in a report
released Wednesday that the Saudi coalition has a pattern of attacking civilian
areas with "powerful bombs."

Late last month, Human Rights Watch released an analysis
identifying a string of coalition bombings on Saada City that "appeared to
violate international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, and
resulted in numerous civilian deaths and injuries." The group warned that
the United States could be liable for war crimes due to its direct support for
the onslaught.

This backing includes logistics and intelligence support for the
coalition's daily strikes. Moreover, the United States is supplying critical
weapons to the coalition, including
cluster bombs, composed of hundreds of explosive submunitions that
kill and maim civilian populations.

Those who survive direct military attacks face other grave
threats, as a Saudi-led naval blockade seals off an impoverished country that,
even before the war, relied on imports for 90 percent of staple food items.
United States warships, stationed
near Yemen, are part of the military force cutting off Yemen from critical
medical and food assistance.

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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs